Panipat, the global centre for recycling textiles, is fading

WHEN the doors open to the warehouse at Ambey Spinning Mills in Panipat, a city 90km from Delhi, it seems as if its contents might tumble out like those of an overstuffed cupboard. Heaps of clothes are piled to the ceiling. Ten women meticulously extract zips, chains and buttons from T-shirts, winter jackets and denims using long blades usually used to chop vegetables. Outside, a teenage boy wields a knife to bash synthetic fibre against a tree stump. In another workshop clothes are shredded, spun into yarn and woven by power looms into blankets. Bullock carts take them for further processing; they are then sent off for sale in India and beyond.

Known as the “cast-off capital”, Panipat is home to 150-200 such mills, which take in discarded clothes from Western countries and turn them into recycled cloth. The industry employs around 20,000 people and brings in annual revenues of $62m, according to Pawan Garg of All India Woollen…